JOIN USSrinivasa Chennupati has been sentenced to six months in prison and three years of supervised release for making false statements on 11 applications for the high-technology worker visas, the Department of Justice said in a statement.
33-year-old Chennupati had pleaded guilty in December 2010 to visa fraud charges. According to the plea agreement, Chennupati admitted that he had submitted 11 foreign worker petitions in 2009 to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that contained counterfeit job offer letters from companies including the Gap Corporation, Wells Fargo Bank and Genentech.
He had falsely stated on the foreign worker petitions that he had 11 jobs available from these companies. The Justice Department added that no work visas were issued from Chennupati's 11 fraudulent applications.
The jobs listed in the petitions were for computer systems analysts and software engineers, who would be paid between USD 60,000 and USD 65,000, according to court records. Chennupati came to the US in 2001 on a work visa.
The case arose "when the defendant, in a misguided attempt to raise more money to support his parents," branched out from his regular employment and started a second business. He opened a separate business as a headhunter for employers in the US, matching them with potential employees in India who would receive H-1B visas.
The USCIS begins accepting petitions for H-1B visa, the highly sought-after US work visa among Indians, on April 1 for the next federal fiscal year that begins on October 1.